Contest: Despise the UC logo? Design a new one!

By now you've all seen the new UC logo compared to a flushing toilet and a perpetually loading computer icon.

By now you've all complained about it.

Now it's time to do something. Now it's time to do better.

Think you can? Show us.

U-T San Diego is sponsoring a contest to replace the loco logo. The winner gets a mug and the thanks of a grateful nation of UC students and alumni. Email your design to
matthew.hall@utsandiego.com
by 5 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 14.

I'll pick the top 5 choices and then we'll give readers 48 hours to choose the best one, starting Monday morning, Dec. 17. The winner will get a mug with his or her design on it, and as a bonus, we'll even send a complimentary mug with the design on it to UC President Mark Yudof.

I'm talking to you, Ryan Trabuco.

"Yeah, the new UC logo is whack-a-doo," Trabuco wrote on Facebook on Monday. "2hrs on some Adobe software and I guarantee to produce something far more memorable and eye-catching."

And I'm talking to you, Daniel Nava.

"Wife said last night that 'It looks like a trade school logo' which is, of course, exactly what the UC system was looking for," Nava tweeted on Tuesday.

But I'm really talking to people like Phil Baker, who are in the design biz.

"This is the ugliest, most hideous logo I have ever seen, and I am in the design business," he commented beneath the open letter I wrote to UC on Monday in which I
absolutely begged them
to lose the new logo.

"It's all wrong in shape, color, and clarity," Baker said. "It will make UC a laughing stock of of the design and art world. Also, few companies ever use graduated color design as used on the C. It's impossible to reproduce accurately and costs more to print on brochures, stationary, etc. How about getting a professional to come up with a real logo?"

How about it? Of course, amateur submissions will be welcomed as well. Beggars can't be choosers.